Lindsay Lohan and Pippa Middleton Did It! So Can Anyone Wear White to a Wedding Now?

More celebrities are wearing white to weddings. But it's not necessarily the faux pas you think it is

By Leslie Gornstein Aug 23, 2011 12:00 PMTags
Lindsay Lohan, Pippa MiddletonAKMimages.net; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Lindsay wore white to Kim Kardashian's wedding. Pippa wore white to her sister Kate Middleton's wedding. What is going on? I thought that was supposed to be tacky.
—Stuart, via the inbox

You mean Lindsay Lohan did something tacky? True, those two chicks did wear white to another girl's fairy princess Barbie fantasy parade.

But the reasons may surprise you:

RELATED: Need more on Kim's second wedding? We've got it all

Let's start with Lilo.

It's very fun to pick on Lilo. It's also easy, especially when—one presumes—she pulls fast ones like she did this weekend. For Kardashian's wedding over the weekend, Lohan wore a floor-length diamond-white gown with deep cleavage (and, if my poor eyes do not deceive, no bra).

Poor taste? Perhaps.

Unless you consider this: Maybe Lohan wore that color under Kardashian's orders.

"For Kim's wedding, she and Kris specifically requested that their guests wear black or white," says Mindy Weiss, who has planned weddings for Pink, Denise Richards, Heidi Klum, Gwen Stefani and so on.

However, Weiss adds, "unless requested by the couple, it's still safe to say that wearing white to a wedding is still taboo!"

Other wedding planners agree.

"Guests have gotten much braver, and some seem to accept that white, and chic black, are acceptable at a wedding provided the white dress is not bridal in style," says wedding consultant Bláithín O'Reilly Murphy.

"Strictly white, cream or ivory dress is in bad taste and should not be worn to a wedding, unless of course the dress code calls for it."

Let's move on to the royal wedding. Pippa Middleton, sister of the good duchess, wore white. But Pippa Middleton also was the head of the bridal party.

"Traditionally, bridesmaids, as in the case of Pippa, would have worn white, and often their dresses would have been similar to that of the bride's, as their original role was to ward off evil spirits and confuse scorned suitors or those trying to make off with the bride and steal her dowry," Bláithín O'Reilly Murphy says.

Yep, really.

"And as the bride generally chooses the color of the bridesmaid's dress, wearing white in this instance is not considered bad etiquette, although may seem a little strange to most."

(For the record, it appears that a male guest can wear white to a wedding. John Bridges, author of How to Be a Gentleman, notes that men wear white dinner jackets all the time.)

So has there been an instance in recent months where a guest wore a white dress against the bride's wishes?

Well, just ask Jill Zarin, the Real Housewife who called out Alex McCord and Ramona Singer for wearing white to a wedding.